Your example is just another reason why parents with young children who excel should look for other options, at least until OUSD realizes that these children also deserve a quality education that meets them where they begin.

Then, my second email talked about my daughter’s experience at her school. She has a great teacher, who if allowed to teach (using her 15 or more years experience and some training on differentiating the curriculum) would have the kids working on different projects. Two examples I used were that my daughter is currently being “taught” three digit addition and subtraction at school, while at home we are talking about squared numbers, square roots and the importance of prime numbers and she is reading above grade level and passes the majority of her spelling pre-tests with a perfect or near perfect score but is still required to write sentences for each word, underline the word and take a post-test.

Our NEXO’s response was that it was difficult to differentiate homework, that the classroom teacher was doing great things (she was in the areas in which she was allowed flexibility), and that I laid out a sad, sad case.

I understand OUSD has an achievement GAP that must be narrowed, but narrowing the achievement GAP should not come at the expense of some children (holding them relatively constant) while trying to move lower performing children up. That is cheating – it’s cheating the system, the lower performing students who are made to believe something that they are at the knowledge level of their classmates and to the students who are kept down to make the district look good.

Eric Nelson has some good ideas. He believes in and works toward the advancement of those children who are struggling. My experience is that he only has so much time, effort and influence and has chosen to use it on specific students first and foremost.

Unfortunately, it’s NOT the low achievers who make the greatest contributions to society. Perhaps education policy that focuses on a society’s low achievers, while ignoring its bright potential high achievers, should be complemented by an expanded immigration & work visa program. The program could focus on countries that allow their brightest and smartest to be bright and smart at school. They would be fuel for our economy and a source of income for American high school drop outs and graduates selling fast food and/or holding out tin cups at freeway exits and intersections.

THANK YOU for getting your bright daughter out of the Oakland Schools. Given her age and grade level I assume (hope) too much damage hasn’t already been done. I’m sure you’ll be keeping a sharp eye on whatever school she attends.

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” even if it is bright and/or gifted. Unfortunately, you’ll never see this truth attached to that slogan in our land of make believe.

And, like a broken record, I once again fully agree with Catherine and Hills Parent. I wish OUSD would realize that it needs to focus some (even a tiny amount) of time and resources on its above proficient students. Even in the “hills” schools not enough is being done to challenge these kids and spur them on to greater achievement.

On those rare times when I bothered to try to contact the NEO, she failed to return my calls and matters were not resolved until Senator Perata’s office was involved.

Most of the parents at my school know who our nexo is. We have had many parents calling her with questions and frustrations surrounding our principal and school. It seems to me that the nexos are nothing more than puppets. Their strings are pulled by the state administrator and Brad Stam. They rarely come to the school and yet they have all the pat answers to pacify the masses. Did you know that they evaluate the principals on their attendance at meetings and if the principals make the dates for having their teachers turn in assessments on time? There is no evaluation done on how principals interact with their staff and parents. The whole staff and parents could be totally dissatisfied with the principal but that doesn’t matter to the nexos. Bottom line? They only care about the business aspect of schooling and API status. What happened to educating our youth? Sadly that appears to be a thing of the past.

in the 11 years we’ve been involved with OUSD, the network executive officer (NEO) has only made appearances two times, each time involved a situation that became “bigger than the school”.

in any case, we don’t miss the NEO when it’s “business as usual”, and we were not impressed with them when they were engaged with our school. my sense from my limited experience is that the intermediary (atleast the one we dealt with) does not add value to the current process.

I’d imagine the network executives would want to talk with families from time to time to get a sense of what’s happening — or not happening — at a school. Or do you think concerns about curriculum should be addressed within a school, without involving the central office?

In general, how valuable are these intermediary positions — to principals, teachers and the system in general?